Pleasantly surprised

It’s just after noon here and already I’ve been up for almost 8 hours. Jesica, Andrea, and I woke up before dawn this morning to take a tuk-tuk to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise there. It was lovely. Despite being templed out, Angkor Wat is definitely worth seeing. It’s enormous and essentially you’re walking around centuries old ruins. We spent about 5 hours there altogether, seeing the main temple and a couple others nearby. I bought a one-day pass and I think that’ll be sufficient for me. Those guys are going back for day three tomorrow. I’m sure the other temples are amazing, too, but I guess I’m more of a drive-by tourist. I’m OK with just scratching the surface of most things, unless it’s something I’m really passionate about. If it were a temple dedicated to the history of food, for example, it might be a different story.

The weather here continues to be hot and humid. What I wouldn’t give for a pool! A few of us were speculating about the possibility of paying one of the higher end hotels in town to let us take a dip. Hmm… Last night I walked around the night market here. It has a different feel than other night markets around Asia. The food section is sparse, unfortunately, although I did manage to get a nice fruit shake. I also got the Siem Reap version of a crèpe, with banana, egg (sort of a custard in a can), and Milo, which is the Nestle Asia version of Ovaltine. It was delicious, if not nutritious.

I have to say, I kind of had low expectations for Cambodia. I decided to come here and to Vietnam because they’re so close, but neither one of them has ever held any special appeal to me. Cambodia has been a really pleasant surprise, however. For one, there’s an incredible amount of social entrepreneurship here, businesses operating with a purpose - employing HIV-positive women, the disabled, or using their profits to fund literacy projects. There’s also an incredible amount of recycling going on - the bags and wallets made out of rice bags, and last night I saw a number of products, from jewelry to photo frames, made from recycled paper and newspapers. So cool. I’m totally inspired and am pretty sure I want to do something like this next. Although I had no idea what I was looking for when I started this trip, it’s possible that I may have just found it.